Orenda
by thenopetrain
Summary: "Please, Lizzie…" The sound of his voice injures her in too many places and she lurches out of her chair.


**Most of this has been sitting in my phone for a while. I was playing around with a few random, theory (I'm sorta obsessed with the hope that Liz's mother is the big bad. please, oh please!) scenes after the Luthor Braxton episodes and I just didn't seem to find the will to finish it. And then that last episode happened and my emotions are everywhere with that cliffhanger. So, anything referencing the latest episode is obviously way newer. I'm totally freaking out even though I know Red will be okay. I also went a little crazy with my dictionary haha, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless. This whole thing frustrated me and I didn't know where to end the damn thing so I apologize if it's haphazard. The song is **_**"**_**If I go, I'm goin" by Gregory Alan Isakov.**

* * *

tra·jec·to·ry

trə'jekt(ə)rē

Noun

1\. the path followed by a projectile flying or an object moving under the action of given forces.

_Trajectory._ A bullet, fired by a rifle, would take three seconds to reach a target about one thousand three hundred and twenty yards away.

1,320 yards.

It's an estimate.

About three seconds.

Yards. Feet. Heartbeats. Breaths. _Steps._ A simple pivot and turn. A movement to seek a friend's encouragement on a matter that should have been taken care of months ago. A movement so she doesn't see the devastation on his face. The assassin left Red's humanity out of his calculations. The shot was clear. The distance was right. Aim high, let gravity pull. The girl had gotten out of the way. It had been perfect…and the damned man turned.

One.

Two.

Three.

His heart would have exploded.

It would have been a job well done.

One…two…three…

_This house  
She's holding secrets  
I got my change behind the bed  
In a coffee can,  
I throw my nickels in  
Just in case I have to leave  
And I will go if you ask me to  
I will stay if you dare  
And if I go I'm goin shameless  
I'll let my hunger take me there  
_  
Down a lane walks a monster. His cloak is darkness. His eyes are ghosts. The trees fall over his head. _Subdued_. He is subdued. By memory, love, and all things lacking. Used to walk around like a loaded gun. Took the long road in the end and it took him. All these rarities seem more frequent now that light has touched his life. There is nothing more for life behind him. The lazy snow he remembers has gone. The sky is clear. Crisp. The domestic qualities that catch in the dark, shining pallid in the moonlight, stir trepidation into every whisper of his steps.

Sedation has seduced him here.

The past and present swirl and mix.

They offer him a convoluted scene from before with the background of now.

He stops at the empty lot. Singed. The tree is gone. He feels ragged. _Let it burn._ A pile of debris sits collected to one side, the foundation still stands, a garbage container overflows beside the pile of cinders and brick. Somewhere, beneath the concrete there's a basement, and he hates that he can't destroy that as well. Footsteps. Movement. He tenses. The hand in his pocket becomes the hand around his gun. She dissolves from the darkness.

"I'm offended, Raymond. No bullet to the head?"  
"Where's the fun in that?"  
A heartbeat passes and all pretenses fall. There is nothing to shield them from one another. Not on this street. Not in front of this house. Not when the memory of a ruse paints the walls and the floors red like some ironic joke; the finishing touch.  
"You made a premature move, threatening Jasper like you did."  
"If you so much as breathe in her direction I-"  
"You'll what? Shoot me? We've already been down that road."  
"She doesn't remember."  
"Masha? No, I imagine she doesn't." Her smile isn't the way he recalls. Coy. Sneering. Accusatory. And behind it lies a simmering rage set to devour him. She knows. She knows everything and she's done pretending to care.

There's a wounded animal in his eyes; its writhing cries echo around in the cage of his chest. _Let me loose, let me loose, let me run. I'll destroy her._ Paranoia chills him - instinctive and alert. He knows when he's been cornered.

"You had the world to protect, Raymond," She rises, wading through the darkness with three languid steps until she stands on the curb before him, over him, a looming shadow of din and despair. "Instead, you play at this...barratry."

bar·ra·try  
ˈbarətrē  
noun

1\. (archaic) fraud or gross negligence of a ship's master or crew at the expense of its owners or users.

2\. (LAW) vexatious litigation or incitement to it.

_Barratry_. There are tears in her eyes now, seething and malicious drops of acid. Slowly, her hands rise up to the sides of his face, the awful mimicry of the woman that haunts them both. He stills entirely.

"_He's going to stop breathing!"_ There, somewhere, in the distance, above his head, inside his heart, echoing…_Lizzie_. But where? Not here. Not in front of him. Not this ghoul that tried to take her from him. He wants to close his eyes so that he can't see the ruin lying in this mirage's own. They don't need to look into the wasteland of each other to know it exists. Her face gets closer. His hands come up to her waist to hold her there and he feels just the slightest resistance in his side. _Sedation_. _Seduction_. This isn't real.

Back off.  
Give her to me.  
Get out.  
I love you.  
You can't have her.

"This is the Ninth Circle, Ray." Gunshots. Blood. Fire. Their life is a song, a tall tale, the entertainment on television. _It can't possibly be real._

He can recall every bit of it. There is a memory of books on books on books. Of clutter and madness and smiles. It shines with serenity, sings with fallacy. She is leaning against their counter, a foot popped behind her. Engrossed and jotting notes into the spaces between words and the edges of the pages. Dante and his modern scribe. She was glorious and oblivious. Nothing like his life away from here_. She gushed what she'd learned. She exuded academia._ He fell in love with the wrong mind. A fake mind. A mind that conned a man and catered to his heart. A little girl. A blackmail file. A mistake. _Regret._

The Ninth Circle.

The end.

The deepest pit of hell.

"Are you going to kill me?" He breathes the words out; deflated and resigned. He's been off his game for too long. The people he's managed to keep at bay are nipping at his heels. Handing one's self over to death is now a pastime. An addiction. A penance. A habit that gets results faster than all the safer ways. There's a comfort in this kind of end. No one is here but her and _them._ This is personal. _Isn't it always?_ There are only so many ways a man can die.

"There's already a target on your back…there's _always_ been a target on your back." Her eyes never stray from his and he sees the truth of it. Her head, it moves so minutely from one side to the other. It tells him to stay still. Don't move too quickly. For one, stolen moment he imagines regret in her expression. How glorious the unwanted bliss from an apology might make him feel after so long. How bitter its resonance. Before him stands the echo of an imaginary life. Student. Partner. Lover. Mother. Spy. Those were simpler times. But one thing hasn't changed:

They're both terrible at following orders.

_This house  
She's quite the talker  
She creeks and moans  
She keeps me up  
And the photographs  
Know I'm a liar  
They just laugh as I burn her down  
And I will go if you ask me to  
I will stay if you dare  
And if I go I'm goin on fire  
Let my anger take me there  
_

pan·ic  
ˈpanik/  
noun

uncontrollable fear or anxiety, often causing wildly unthinking behavior.

_Panic._ It lances through her every time she sees a new nurse move into her line of vision. For a private clinic, there seems to be a lot of foot traffic. And she's alone.

Her phone has five missed calls.

Three voicemails.

Eight texts.

Dembe isn't with her.

He's _there_.

In _that_ room.

With _him._

She could have gone in too. She wouldn't have been stopped. But her feet wouldn't budge beyond the threshold into the hallway. She just let them rush away without her. The doctors here…it had been like watching organized chaos. They had met them at the car. Extracted Red from the back before she'd made it around to the other side of the vehicle. Loaded him onto a gurney. Everything was coming back around inside her head. Every possible outcome besides death. Every possible thing that could cause death. _Around and around they go._

"Deminished breaths."

"Pneumothorax."

An intubation tube poised itself in the air.

"BP's low. Way low. Let's hurry this along."

Bags for blood transfusions seemed to appear out of nowhere. Dembe had her call ahead. No alias. Just Raymond Reddington, a sucking chest wound, and a lot of traffic violations.

"Get that IV started before you can't find a vein."

And then, they were gone.

From the depths of her mind comes a semester she spent in school on trauma in the field. She needed the credits, not the information. _Not at the time._ Now, she was wishing she'd envisioned something a little crazier than profiling. It was a desk job. A fairly low-key position. She'd strut her stuff. Inspire awe with her intuition and intelligence. She'd be that bitch from before. She'd get her way. All of what she thought she would be by now has gone straight to hell.

"Excuse me…Elizabeth?" Bloodied scrubs. That's what she sees when her focus comes back and she turns her head to the left. _Up. Up. Look up._ She finds Rosa Heredia standing next to her chair. Liz is on her feet, glancing behind the manicurist-slash-trauma surgeon and feels worry clutch at her lungs. _Where's Dembe?_ She swallows and doesn't quite comprehend the tired smile in the woman's eyes before her. The words don't have to be said for Liz to _know_ that he's made it through surgery.

"Which um-" She waves her still bloodied hands in the direction of where they'd taken him, and sees that they're unsteady when she draws them back to herself.

"This way." Rosa is already turning away from her, and Liz finds herself outside of Red's private room before she can regulate her breathing. Like before, the ability to make her legs move seems impossible. Anger, betrayal, the hurt and the grief…they bottle up inside of her and refuse to let her access the finer bits of her humanity, and she just_ stands there._

"I just need a minute." Her voice is tight and Rosa gives her a thin smile before letting her know that a nurse will be checking on him every thirty minutes for the next two hours.

That his condition is still very serious.

That they inserted a chest tube under his armpit.

That, depending on how his lung responds, it'll be taken out in the next forty-eight to seventy-two hours.

That she shouldn't be alarmed by it.

That he'll be safe here.

_That…that…that._ Liz watches the woman walk away from her, and she steps aside to lean against the wall next to the door. She is aware that Rosa knows all the protocols that Red would implement if he were able to issue them. That doesn't mean she's okay with leaving him here.

But she can't go in yet.

_If I go in, if I see him, if I hold his hand, and tell him I'm-…_It would contradict every bitter, angry, saddened part of her that made her walk away from him earlier. And while all that hardly seems to matter in the face of what just happened…how many times will she walk away or tell him off only to come right back? She's always pulled in by him, flailing around in some kind of wind tunnel, confused by his charity, scared of his devotion, annoyed with his patience and perseverance. But putting Tom in her life…it _hurts_ her, this truth.

She feels like a kite in a hurricane.

Liz glances at her phone, sends out a text that lets Ressler know she'll call him in an hour, and ignores the quick reply as she slips it into her jacket pocket. It takes her exactly twenty-three seconds to muster the courage to push the door open. She finds Dembe's eyes first. Finds the echo of his worry etched in the space between the way he draws in a breath and the way his mouth opens to say something. They move to stand at the foot of Red's bed.

_You should have given it to him sooner. Why did you wait? What's wrong with you? _No matter how hard she tries to make Dembe look as though he's accusing her of something, it always ends up being _her_ voice inside her head, _her_ look of rage and disappointment and horror at her refusal. Part of her felt like it had been some sick kind of game. _He wants something from you…he's not who you think he is._ Naomi and Tom had been right until that bullet-

"I'm still angry." She's speaks softly, like the intubated man on the bed isn't dead to the world. Like he can somehow hear her confess the ugly truth she carries with her into the room. She thinks she would have shied away or tensed or jumped if she wasn't _so damn tired_, but she remains passive. Feels Dembe squeeze her hand, senses his eyes, and hears the compassion and the understanding when he says,

"You need to let him explain."

_The shingles man they're shaking  
The back door's burning through  
This house she's quite the keeper  
Quite the keeper of you  
_

a·nath·e·ma  
əˈnaTHəmə  
noun  
1\. something or someone that one vehemently dislikes.

_Anathema_. It's the one with the army of burning shadows. Bent at the knee before her. Touches of flame and fealty. Marked. Marked for life. For use. For saving. For death. One stands before her. Smoldering. This is his fault. He was there. He takes her hand and she can't breathe, can't see.

Everything changes.  
Turns.  
Flips over.  
And blurs.

He's lying on the floor. There's blood. A smell drags bile into the back of her throat. _No!_ _This isn't right...this can't be right._ She reaches into the flames. Has to. Can't stop it. His face appears from below. That smoldering, burning pair of eyes. His face is ash and his skin is dust. Lava for blood and embers for breath that consume her face when he groans,

"Go back." She shakes her head, tries to turn away, to retract her hand. _It is burning. _She can't breathe! "You have to go back." The world falls down around her, it's eating him up but she pulls him out. _It hurts!_ She's crying. He's screaming.

And…

And Red is watching her from his bed. Propped up, but sagged against his pillows. Washed-out and sweaty. There's a hitch in the way he breathes. A desperation in the way his mouth hangs open just enough to let air in and out. Like his nasal passages just aren't cutting it. The cannula is still there. The imitation of strength is there as well, but it's a cheap veneer with how frequently it slips away. He's too weak to show off. To guard himself. _Helpless._ And he _needs_ her. Someone named Caul. About the fulcrum. _You think he's still using you? Look at him, for God's sake._ He raises his eyebrows just enough to indicate her haggard state. Lips parting just a little more. A breath sucked in and held, ready to be used towards words. There's the strain she sees in the muscles of his neck as he pushes his diaphragm up, the tension in his jaw, pain dimming his eyes.

"Don't." She snaps at him because she's trying to get rid of the phantom smell in the room. Smoke and ash and death. She needs to cut him off before he says anything, before he wastes the breath on her. He recoils just enough to make him wince. Liz holds her breath and glares at him. An uncomfortable pressure wells up inside her chest and inches up into the back of her throat. She can't stand seeing him like this. She doesn't know it yet but, without that explanation from him about Tom, she's grieving her loss of certainty.

_I've never lied to you. _

_I'm learning not to take what you say at face value._

_Grant me the dignity of a yes or a no…_

"Please, Lizzie…" The sound of his voice injures her in too many places and she lurches out of her chair. She doesn't say anything to Dembe outside the door. Ignores the way he calls after her. She doesn't bother to wipe at the one or two tears that leak out of her eyes. That pressure in the back of her throat is dragging her to her vehicle where she sits and trembles after slamming the door shut. It's fear that has her hands wrapped around the steering column. Fear from almost losing him. Fear from caring. Fear from the possibility of it happening again.

"Dammit." The curse is a hiss as she digs her phone out from her jacket pocket. She hasn't changed clothes in days. Couldn't make herself go that far away. Tried, but couldn't. She's dialing, shakes her head once…twice, and clears her throat. No more tears. No shaky voice.

"Aram…yeah it's me. I'm good, listen. I need you to look up two names for me." She switches the phone to her left ear, puts the keys in the ignition, and turns the SUV on. "You ready? Okay…Leonard Caul and Nicholas Caul. No, I don't want the information on my phone. Let Cooper and the team know I'm coming in…"

_I will go if you ask me to  
I will stay if you dares  
And if I go, I'm goin crazy  
I'll let my darlin take me there_

Two days later, she's exactly where she said she wouldn't be.

He wakes up and grips her hand like he has no intention of letting go.

She holds onto him.

All the syllables that transpire between them next are feeble, broken…hushed as they try to contain large emotions to the confines of smaller, fickle words.

"I'm scared."

"I know."

* * *

**I still don't know what this is. I got a little annoyed with it, to be honest. Anyway, Happy Easter and Passover! God Bless us during this stupid hiatus. Also, if anybody wants to prompt me, go for iiiiitttt. It can be a song, it can be a one liner, anything. Shoot me a pm. Hope you liked it! And thanks for reading.**

**P.S. the title of this one-shot "Orenda" is Huron and it means, roughly, "the power of human will to change the world. Set up as an opposing force to fate or destiny. If powerful forces beyond one's control are trying to force a particular outcome, orenda is a kind of vocalized summoning of a personal strength to change this." **

**P.P.S yes, I am a teeenie bit obsessed with cool words. have a fun rest of your day, guys!**


End file.
